Commentary/Pritish Nandy

Extortion, a national pastime

Every morning you pick up the newspaper to read about extortions. Extortions by the Dawood, Abu Salem gang. Extortions by Gawli men. Extortions by Chhota Rajan. Extortions by any number of small time hoods and local thugs who have climbed on to the bandwagon of easy money.

The victims are no longer corrupt businessmen or flashy movie stars or dishonest builders. They are not even music company maliks and movie predictors, diamond merchants and jewellers, hoteliers and restaurant owners, who fund their exorbitant lifestyles with hot cash. Those whom we normally associate with shady deals and gangland wars. Today's victims are small people. Employees. Small time traders. Professionals. Even streetside vendors. They are being hunted down and harassed.

Extortion has assumed epidemic proportions.

But it is not Bombay alone. Much of India is in its throes. Bihar and UP have always been hotbeds of crime and corruption, we all know. Extortions there are commonplace. Veerappan down South has entered the same game. So have the Naxalites in Andhra. The ULFA. The Bodos. The NLFT of Tripura. The Jharkhandis. The Harkat ul Ansar. The CPI-ML. The Ranvir Sena. Wherever you look, extortion is growing. In the name of religion, politics, caste, region. In the name of social justice. In the name of militancy and terrorism, when all other arguments fail.

In Assam, ULFA is extorting tea companies. So are the Bodos. What is even more worrying, they are extorting the State as well. Even government bodies in Assam are paying them hafta. If rumours are to be believed, no one can live there without paying for protection. In Delhi last weekend, the police discovered that Babloo Srivastava was masterminding extortions from Naini jail in Allahabad, together with a Dubai-based don and another convict lodged in Tihar jail. Using cellular phones from their cells.

But it is not only the militants and the criminals who extort us. The state extorts us too. A profligate government extorts us to pay higher wages to a vast army of overpaid, underemployed public servants. It extorts us in the name of subsidies, public works, defence expenditure, social justice. Every rupee made by corrupt politicians is paid for by us. Each time Ram Vilas Paswan hires thousands of dalits in the railways and Laloo Prasad pampers his constituency of backwards, you and I pay for it. Directly through taxes. Indirectly through duties, through the hydra-headed monster of inflation. For extortion is like cancer. You may not notice it at first. But once it spreads, it is a killer.

There was a time when for every rupee you and I earned by the sweat of our brow, we were expected to pay a tax of more than what we earned! It was daylight robbery. But because the State was extorting, no one could do much about it. Palianappan Chidambaram's problems today lie in those awful years when a stupid, unreasonable government forced us to change from a nation of honest tax payers into a nation of tax evaders. Corruption grew. But no one ever had the courage to put Morarji Desai in the dock, for destroying our moral temper, Instead, in a typically hypocritical gesture, we rewarded him with a Bharat Ratna.

Luckily, the wheel has turned full circle and we now realise that politics -- and men like Desai -- have impoverished India, not the tax evaders. In fact, when Chidambaram became finance minister, like most Indians, I felt proud that we had a minister who did not mouth clichés and political slogans, but was genuinely interested in opening up the economy and making India free. After all, a free society and a free economy always go hand in hand.

Yet, the opening up of the economy and the dismantling of the old, corrupt structures of the licence Raj have not changed attitudes. While taxes are far more realistic now, old habits die hard. Tax evaders are still not paying up and the state, instead of educating its citizens, telling them how important it is to pay their taxes and contribute to the national wealth, is resorting to another kind of extortion. Raids. While the VDIS may be an excellent scheme for habitual tax offenders, for common citizens who avoid their taxes, raids is not the answer. Education is. Persuasion is.

In fact, many societies have used taxes as correctional strategy. Fiscal incentives have succeeded in reducing population growth, environmental degradation, civic problems. India can do the same if we give up this attitude of extortion and banda baazi. Punishment cannot correct a nation's lifestyle. Like encounters cannot stop terrorism. Understanding may. An intelligent, informed, interactive campaign for the VDIS would have succeeded far more in ensuring tax compliance than raids. For raids, whoever may conduct them, are always seen as extortion. And, once extortion is legitimised by the state, others step in. The underworld. The militants. The politicians. The local thugs.

There are many Indians who do not only bear the brunt of extortion rackets run by the underworld. They pay protection money to the police, to the politicians, to the slum lords. They pay protection money to militants. They even pay the countless regulatory authorities to ensure that they can live a normal, safe, uninterrupted life. You can call it hafta if you want. You can call it taxes. You can call it rishwat. But the purpose is the same. To buy peace, protection, safety, continuity. The prime minister has called for a stop to corruption. But corruption and extortions go hand in hand. And, to set an example, the State must stop its own extortions. It must stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. It must stop making wasteful expenditure. It must put in place laws that stop the bullying of the common citizen, rich or poor. TADA, MISA, FERA, COFEPOSA have no place in a civilised society.

Otherwise, every point of intervention will eventually become a point of extortion. Whether it is an octroi naka or a local thana or a pooja pandal. Whether it is a traffic light or a village court or a municipal office. Whether it is a school or a college where you want to admit you kids. Whether it is a cinema hall or a late night bar or a temple where you have gone for devi darshan. Someone will always be there to harass you, intimidate you, extort you, He could be a thug or a white collar criminal, a government official or a militant or just a greedy poojari seeking to make an extra buck. Whoever it is, he will be just another part of this huge extortion machinery that seems to taking over our lives.

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